Process update
Still working on the YOU’RE YOUR OWN PERSON PAGE, but I wanted to take a little break since I keep running into blocks. However, I think I did find some issues that I can now address. The following are using the characters Vinegar, from the Shantae series, along with Caesar and Doom, OC’s of a Shantae fan comic that, if you are a fan of the canon game, I would highly recommend checking out here.
Motivation is key to making art, as most of you know. But to some new artists, Motivation is only as important as Confidence; a source of imagination that can sometimes be as shaky and unstable as the San Andreas Fault. So it is vitally important that you do what you can to relieve yourself of as much unnecessary stress as possible.
MARKERS
Some programs, like Clip Studio Paint, come with posable 3D figures. Now, I hear you ask “Oh, so I just pose them and trace?” Well, that is one way to do it, but no. At least not for every block you hit, Maybe if the pose is dynamic and extremely difficult. But in this case, I’m simply using the figures as markers. This way I have a reference to their proportions and I don’t have to stress my brain trying to get their poses just right.
ROUGH DRAFT
Keep the idea LOOSE and Simplify the shapes, so I used a relatively thin pen. You want to make the pen thin enough so you don’t feel required to draw a perfect line, but thick enough so that you can see it with just one stroke. Using multiple strokes leads to fixation on a single part. And that is a HUGE no-no here.
The whole point of a rough draft is to play around and see what works and what doesn’t. Such as I did with Vinegar. It maybe hard to see but I moved her lower torso around a few times. Don’t worry if the bones look broken, the whole point of a rough draft is to play around with the idea. And what’s the point of playing if you can’t have fun!?
Don’t think of broken bones as a sin, just figure out how to snap them into place. (in terms of art, at least. If you recently have had a broken bone please go see a doctor).
Cleaning it up
On a separate layer, I drew over the rough draft. Now that I had the rough idea of the concept on paper, I felt more at ease since I didn’t have to partition a part of my brain to remember every single details. Here I used a slightly thicker pen. The rough draft used around a 0.3-0.5, here I think I bumped it up a bit to about 0.7.
I also realized the importance of knowing which eraser to use.
HARD ERASER: This is what you use when you have a solid grasp of what you want to happen. Like if you know how long the arm is going to be but need to rework the line. I used a Hard Eraser to wipe out a section of the arm (such as the biceps or the forearm) and simply redrew the lines quickly. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look perfect, just remember that the Inked version will always look better then the sketch.
SOFT ERASER: This is an old gem I had forgotten about. The soft eraser is best used if you only vaguely know what you’re going for but still need a bit of tinkering. It’ll knock back a much wider range, but still allow the previous lines to be visible. This is good. You want to be able to rework your idea with using the marks you have perviously made.
A good example would be around Vinegar’s BELT. You can see where the original belt was going to be, but I decided it should be a bit lower. The Soft eraser is good if you want to tinker with proportions or smaller details.
BREAKING UP THE INK LOAD
This is a super important concept I recent discovered. One thing that kills motivation and confidence is the staggering amount of work that is left. But it’s like my dad always said; “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”. So, the concept here is to physically break down the work load by giving general thick outlines to the characters. You can see I also added a bit on young Caesar, this is because even though we are inking, There is always time to experiment and alter. Here I used a 40.0 pen.
Details
Once that’s done, I went back and used a smaller pen (around 20 and 10) to add stuff in like the eyes and ears. using different pens gives the image more room to breath. You may also notices Doom the cat looks a bit off. I did this one in a bit of a hurry so I didn’t really look up a reference. Welp! Live and learn!
On top of that, I discovered something really important, When working in a different sized canvas, make sure to adjust your tools accordingly. I usually work in comics so I have my pens smaller. But here I should have bumped my 40 pen up to 60 or so for the BREAKING UP outline. Aside from that, and the hour it took me To do this. I still call this a win.
FINISHED!
All that was left was to add some gray scale and solid inking. It may not be perfect, but this was a warm up, it’s not meant to be perfect. It’s meant to put you in a good mood and motivate you to draw. So I still call this a major success!
